Musk to end US spaceship programme amid Trump row
SpaceX chief Elon Musk said his spaceflight company will ground its Dragon spacecraft - which is used by NASA for resupply and astronaut returns - as part of his feud with US President Donald Trump.
Yesterday, Mr Trump threatened to cancel Mr Musk's government contracts, after the two men fell out over US budget policy.
The public eruption of hostilities between the world's richest man and the President of the United States became even more intense after yesterday's comments by President Trump during an oval office meeting with the German Chancellor.
The two have clashed publicly over the budget bill making its way through congress to fund the President's priorities.
Mr Trump accused Mr Musk of being upset because the bill cuts away subsidies for electric cars like Tesla, and because he refused to appoint a Mr Musk ally as head of NASA.
The two men have taken to their rival social media platforms to trade insults, with Mr Musk writing: "In light of the President's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately."
Following Mr Musk's announcement, NASA spokeswoman Bethany Stevens said on X that the government space agency would "continue to execute upon the President's vision for the future of space."
"We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President's objectives in space are met," she added.
NASA had hoped to certify Boeing's Starliner for crewed missions, but that programme has faced severe delays.
Its most recent test flight last year ended in failure after the spacecraft experienced propulsion issues en route to the orbital lab with its first astronaut crew.
The Starliner ultimately returned to Earth empty, while the two astronauts were brought home by SpaceX earlier this year.
Crew Dragon's certification in 2020 ended nearly a decade of US reliance on Russian Soyuz rockets to transport astronauts following the retirement of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011.
American astronauts still fly aboard Soyuz rockets, while Russian cosmonauts ride on Crew Dragons under a longstanding seat-swap agreement.
In addition to NASA missions, Crew Dragon also flies private missions - most recently Fram2, which carried tourists over the Earth's poles.
The next scheduled crew launch is Tuesday's Axiom-4 mission, which will see Crew Dragon transport astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary to the ISS.
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